China Hand also states that "The life of the average worker or peasant just does not compare with twenty years ago." True, but over the past ten years, peasant incomes have stagnated, especially for those too far from infrastructure to sell to the cities. Meanwhile while younger urbanites have plenty of possibilities, there are still many older workers who worked or are still working in state-owned factories, and their pensions are gone. The government is afraid to stop lending to these inefficient factories so the money can be redirected to new private industries, because they don't know what to do about all the employees. This is not to say that China hasn't made huge progress since Mao died. If they awarded Nobel prizes on the basis of the numbers of lives materially improved, Deng Xiaoping would've gotten one. The trouble is, there are now lots of poor and unemployed. When they see people getting wealthy, they assume, rightly or wrongly, that it's at the expense of the poor.

But I like China Hand's site.